What makes Enterprise Architecture a real business partner

Blog: Capgemini CTO Blog

For years, Enterprise Architecture teams have developed the last 3 pillars in their companies: flows referential, applicative cartography, pivot formats, servers and networks … are generally well documented, with a structured governance allowing them to be updated.

EA thus allowed a better knowledge, even appropriation, of the Information System, already a very important objective.

After having implemented SOA precepts (sometimes with hardships), the Information System must now facilitate the digital transformation, open up and communicate with partners/customers/suppliers’ IS, enable data valorization while respecting data privacy, enabling IoT to flourish etc. These huge challenges need to be prioritized and handled with business teams to facilitate businesses / IT alignment and the selection of technological investments that fulfill business strategies.

Architecture principles, of course, take into account context and business challenges. But Business Architecture puts forward many concepts (value chain, business capabilities and so on) that are still too little developed in the EA frameworks such as TOGAF.

And even more important, in today’s tech-advanced world, the soft skills of facilitation and communication are very crucial: an Enterprise Architect needs to develop these to meet challenges in order to make Enterprise Architecture a real business partner.